Unwrapping Mars' Pension Plan

With Halloween this past weekend, this week we’ll take a look at the Mars U.S. Retirement Plan’s portfolio. Mars, Incorporated has grown from the candy business Frank and Ethel Mars started in Tacoma, Washington in 1911 into one of the largest family-owned companies in the world, with brands including M&M’s, Snickers, Pedigree, and Royal Canin. In December 2025, it closed its $36 billion acquisition of Kellanova (formerly part of Kellogg), adding brands including Pringles, Cheez-Its, and Pop-Tarts.

Mars CIO Fred Nieuwland oversees the company’s entire suite of pension and savings plans, which together total more than $16 billion. Nieuwland joined Mars in 2006 and led its EMEA pension plans before being named CIO in February 2015. In a 2023 profile, he noted that he initially became interested in the role after reading a horoscope that said Mars would soon cross his path. Later that day, he saw a job listing from Mars, Inc.

The U.S. Retirement Plan is led by Americas investment manager Jason Naskiewicz. Naskiewicz earned an MBA in finance from NYU and has spent his entire career at Mars. He was promoted to his current role around the same time that Nieuwland was made CIO.

Mars’ U.S. Pension Plan also works with Strategic Investment Group. The plan lists SIG as its investment advisor and paid the firm a total of $6.2 million in direct compensation in 2025. The plan had holdings in SIG-managed funds covering real estate, buyout, venture capital, and public equity strategies totaling around $600 million as of 12/31/25.

The U.S. Retirement Plan manages total assets of $5.3 billion as of 12/31/25. Its largest shift in allocation in recent years has been towards U.S. Treasuries, which rose from 8% of the plan’s investment portfolio in 2015 to 19% in 2025.

Over the course of the past decade, the plan’s direct stock holdings ranged from $150 million to $240 million through 2020, then dropped to $35 million by year-end 2025. It has also gradually shifted away from corporate and foreign bonds, preferred stocks, and mutual funds.

Within the plan’s external manager portfolio, hedge funds and liquid credit are the largest sleeve at roughly $1.5 billion, followed by private equity at roughly $830 million and private credit at roughly $450 million.

In last week’s newsletter, users received lists of the Mars U.S. Retirement Plan’s public and private managers. The plan has been invested with Asana since 2017 when it disclosed a holding of $6.4 million in the firm’s debut fund. The plan has since invested in Asana’s second and third flagship funds, with total holdings across all three reaching $33.8 million as of 12/31/25.

Based in Charlotte, NC (half a mile from OWL HQ!), Asana was founded in 2015 by Terry Brown, Jason Tompkins, and Sam Judd. The trio all spent the previous decade before co-founding Asana at retail real estate developer EDENS; Brown as chairman and CEO, Tompkins as CFO, and Judd as VP of Investments. Today, Asana has $9B in AUM, according to its website.

Asana’s portfolio includes properties across 30 metro areas in 18 states and it has additional offices in Atlanta, Boston, Columbia, Denver, Los Angeles, and New York. In July, the firm announced that Norges Bank Investment Management had agreed to an equity commitment of $500 million to form Asana Partners Strategic Partners I, a joint venture focused on U.S. retail assets.

Three of Asana’s funds, its first three flagship vehicles, have private fund returns data on OWL. Users can see the full universe of the 8,500+ private funds OWL has returns for and view OWL’s private fund return benchmarks on the platform.

Fund I’s returns are reported as of 12/31/25 by the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions, while Funds II and III’s returns are reported as of the same date by LA Fire and Police and the Sacramento County Employees’ Retirement System.

Asana also launched its fourth flagship fund at the end of 2024 targeting $1.5 billion. It had raised $944 million as of April 2026, though Mars did not disclose an investment in the vehicle through 12/31/25.

In addition to Mars, other disclosed LPs include Florida RS, Indiana PRS, Johns Hopkins University, the Maryland State Pension, the Michigan Department of Treasury’s Bureau of Investments, New Hampshire RS, Ohio Police & Fire, the South Carolina Retirement System Investment Commission, and Texas ERS.

OWL is an intelligence platform built for allocators, by allocators. Leading endowments, foundations, and family offices use the system to find, monitor, and connect with thousands of fund managers globally. OWL's analytics engine has collected over one billion data points from 65 countries. We make it easy for allocators to find and track information about the managers they care about – not just positions but also performance analytics, people data, business information, and details about the manager investments of other allocators.

Returns represent the return on invested capital of publicly disclosed long positions, as calculated by OWL. Actual returns may vary based on a number of factors, including (but not limited to) undisclosed positions, short exposure, non-equity holdings, cash holdings, and lagged disclosure of positions.

This newsletter and the material on the Old Well Labs platform are for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, manager, or strategy. Certain investment managers, funds, or limited partners (“LPs”) referenced herein may be current or prospective clients of Old Well Labs, and Old Well Labs may have business relationships with such parties. Accordingly, references to any manager, fund, or LP should not be construed as an endorsement, recommendation, or solicitation. Old Well Labs shall not be liable for any investment gain or loss that may occur from the use of this material. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or used in any publication without express written permission from Old Well Labs.